Screen scene
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 13, 2005 9:00 p.m.
“Palindromes” Directed by Todd Solondz
Wellspring Media
A palindrome is a word whose spelling is the same backward as it
is forward. Aviva, the name of the 13-year-old protagonist, is not
only a palindrome in this literal sense but also in the fact that
she is portrayed by eight different actors, including Jennifer
Jason Leigh, throughout “Palindromes.” But writer and
director Todd Solondz uses the plethora of different characters to
add more than a little color to his film; the interchanging of
Aviva between two women, four teenage girls, a 12-year-old boy, and
a 6-year-old girl highlights how audience judgments and biases
alter the perception of a character who, like a palindrome, is
ultimately unchanging. Do reactions change depending simply on the
age or sex of the actor playing a character? How far will audiences
suspend disbelief? In a fable-like exploration of innocence, the
film tells the story of a young girl who dreams of motherhood.
Although she does manage to become pregnant, she is forced to have
an abortion by her sensible parents. She runs away from home and
finds herself at the Christian household of Mama Sunshine (Debra
Monk), surrounded by a rainbow of disabled children praising the
Lord through choreographed song and dance. But she runs away from
this place, too, when she overhears the plot of Papa Sunshine
(Walter Bobbie) to assassinate an abortion doctor. While the film
is set against the background of an abortion debate, it does not
intend to definitively tackle the issue. Rather than provide real
characters to anchor a discussion, the film portrays caricatures of
both the abortion rights and anti-abortion sides. Abortion is
merely the topic, any topic chosen at random, by which Solondz
frames his presentation and study of character. Aviva’s
mother (played superbly by Ellen Barkin) explains her choice to do
away with her son Henry in terms of retaining more disposable
income that allowed her to buy *NSYNC tickets and hand-packed Ben
and Jerry ice cream for her daughter. But the Sunshine household,
with its cheerful condemnations and eerie sense of brainwashing, is
also subject to hysterical satire. Everything is. In dealing with
depressing story lines and truly disturbing situations, one of the
most commendable aspects of the film is its ability to infuse
comedy and inspire uproarious laughter in the midst of darkness.
People familiar with the work of Solondz, best known for his 1995
indie hit “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” may already
understand how breaking taboos can be a truly hilarious enterprise.
Certainly, some people may be completely turned off by the manner
in which the serious issues are treated, but the sharp writing
filled with desperate lines such as, “How many times can I be
born again?” reveal a refreshing infusion of dark humor to
cinema, especially at a time when popular comedy seems to move more
and more in the direction of mindless stupidity. And as
“Palindromes” harkens back to “Welcome to the
Dollhouse” in terms of its dark humor, its devotion to small
flashes of character remind viewers of “Storytelling”
in the way the actors are only given a limited amount of screen
time to perform. Although the film is littered with caricatures,
the audience ultimately feels sympathetic for the different
“Avivas” navigating their own individual courses in a
world filled with extreme conformity. If, as the director suggests,
we are all the same backward as we are forward, then this rhetoric
is all the more absurd. -Emily Camastra
